New York Tech Meetup July Wrap-Up

Last night was another exciting and raucous one at the NY Tech Meetup. There was a loose theme about location or something, but that all got blown out of the water by an extremely accurate, browser-friendly 3D model of the human body.

Biodigital Human

You could hear the jaws dropping to the floor throughout this presentation by a group of medical-techies tied to NYU. Biodigital Human is a full, animated, working model of the human body in 3D. It supports bisection, includes multiple layers, and even helps illustrate different conditions and exercises. The really incredible thing, though, is that it's all done in the browser with WebGL and what the presenter called "a bunch of Python code and a ridiculous amount of JavaScript." It's really amazing stuff (if your GPU is up to it).

SkillSlate

SkillSlate was the last demo of the night and they took that word "demo" very literally. After explaining the service, which brings people together to bid on a job you want done, the founder explained how he had recently used the service to find a breakdance crew to perform at NYTM. He explained the process (3 crews put up bids, he picked the one he liked) and out they came. It was a really fun way to end the night.

Sonar/Knodes

I don't like grouping these two services, but they seem to indicate an emerging trend—the aggregation of multiple social media services to make them more "useful." Sonar uses the Foursquare API to let you check in and then find others at the same location who are related to you (in a sort of Kevin Bacon way). It'll give you a ranked list of people who share Facebook contacts, Twitter follows, etc along with a facilitated introduction (via Twitter). It seems like it'll be really useful for finding people of interest at conferences and big events. Knodes, on the other hand, is for finding people in your extended social graph based on location, skill set, or professional background (using LinkedIn). Knodes is being developed to fill SnapGoods' need to find people with equipment to rent and borrow in different niches and locations.

Taap.it

I think Taap.it is a great service, but they've got a few problems. Chief among them is the name, which is impossible to find via normal Google search. Even in the App Store, there are dozens if not hundreds of apps with some variation on the name "Tap It." So what does Taap.it do? It's actually an awesome service. You just take a photo of something you want to sell, put a quick description and price on it, and in about 30 seconds it's up on a mobile-friendly storefront. Pretty cool, if you can find it.

Viva La Playlist

I haven't tried Viva La Playlist yet, but it seems like a fun take on social music curation. It's pretty similar in concept to turntable.fm, allowing groups to choose music and listen concurrently, voting songs up and down. Viva seems to be more socially focused, with user profiles and a prominent comment/social stream. One big weakness: the music is all piped in from YouTube, which means preroll video and pop up ads. In general, though, I love this trend of concurrent listening/watching with a sidebar of social interaction that seems to be on the rise.